Painful introduction to sailing leads to lifelong passion
Issue 61: July/Aug 2008
The mist of a late summer morning was rising from the waters of Penn Lake. It mingled and swirled into the rays of the yellow sun and slowly began to burn away. It had been nearly 40 years since last I stood on the shore of this tiny lake in the Pocono Mountains. Forty years since I had discovered my true passion. No, it wasn’t that dark-haired girl with whom I’d shared a brief summer romance. It was the memory of a tiny sailboat that had drawn me back. As I gazed into the mist, my thoughts traveled back to those days.
It was 1966. My friend, David, had invited me to spend two weeks at his family’s cottage. One day he asked if I wanted to go sailing. “Sailing?” I asked “You mean, like, on a sailboat?”
“Yeah,” he replied, “we have a Super Snark.” I knew absolutely nothing about sailing. I didn’t know a halyard from a jibsheet, a centerboard from a rudder. But I was 17 and could not begin to imagine the consequences of my reply.
Of course, I said, “Yes.”
We stepped the mast, raised the single sail on this foam-cored, plastic-hulled little catboat, and pushed her out. A gust of wind arrived just then, and we immediately capsized. Neither of us knew enough to balance our weight to windward. David’s entire lexicon of sailing terminology consisted of “Coming about.” Didn’t matter that half the time we were jibing. It was the only sailing term he knew.
That day we dumped the boat a dozen times. My face was bruised from several impromptu encounters with the boom, and my knees were nicked from unsuccessfully trying to shift my weight as we turned. We discovered that if I began shifting my weight just before we turned, the boat stayed on her feet and we could keep sailing instead of climbing back aboard and bailing.
Sailing again
That first day was a painful introduction to the world of sailboats. Nonetheless, the next day I asked if we could go sailing again. We sailed every day after that, and by the end of the first week we were only dumping the boat once daily. By the middle of the following week, we had finished with capsizing altogether. I got to steer a bit, and it was during one of my brief stints at the helm that my epiphany occurred. I thought, “I don’t know how much little sailboats cost, but someday I’m going to have one.” It was my first truly adult decision, and one of the best I’ve ever made.
Several boats later, I am the proud skipper of a 34-foot sloop, a yacht club member, an accomplished racer with silver on the mantle, and one who has journeyed many places before the mast. The liberation and independence I savor aboard my sailboat keeps me sane, makes me tick, and drives me forward. But those feelings can never duplicate the pure rapture I felt aboard that little catboat. The gift of sailing is a bequest I can never repay to my friend. It is beyond price.
That glorious summer marked the end of our boyhood. With war raging in Southeast Asia and the pressure of college admission facing us, our lives changed forever. Gone were the idyllic days of sunbathing, swimming, and budding passion. For those two young men, their bodies bronzed from hours in the sun, boisterous shouting and unbridled enthusiasm gave way to the realities of life. Yet the joy of sailing on that little boat had been burned indelibly into my soul and would stay with me . . . has stayed with me to this very day. Soon afterward, David moved away. He graduated from college, moved to the Colorado mountains, and became a successful designer and engineer. I became a sailor.
Rich Finzer earned his powerboat operator’s license at age 11 and began sailing six years later. He cruises Lake Ontario aboard his Hunter 34, Pleiades. He supports his sailing addiction as a technical writer and is a frequent contributor to boating magazines.
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